“Caste apartheid” / “hidden apartheid”
Caste-based untouchability framed as apartheid
At the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, Dalit groups pressed to have caste discrimination recognized alongside racism — describing village segregation as India’s “hidden apartheid” — while the Indian government objected that caste is descent-based but not racial, and lobbied to keep caste out of the final documents.
What happened
Roughly 150+ Indian Dalit activists came to Durban seeking language condemning caste discrimination; they and NGOs (including HRW) framed caste segregation as “hidden apartheid.” India argued the matter was domestic and non-racial and helped strip caste from the final text.
In what has been called India’s “hidden apartheid,” entire villages in many Indian states remain completely segregated by caste. (Human Rights Watch, 2001)
Under each definition
The 1973 Convention is tied to racial-group domination on the southern-Africa model; caste is not within it.
Caste is not an enumerated basis for the crime of apartheid (“racial group”).
Despite real segregation, there is no equivalent legislated racial regime; modern India bans untouchability by constitution.
“Hidden/caste apartheid” is an established analogical usage — endorsed by many Dalit and human-rights groups, contested by India.
The case that the label applies
Proponents argue untouchability is hereditary, endogamous, and enforced by segregation and violence — a birth-based, institutionalized domination that functions like apartheid; UN anti-racism bodies (CERD) have held caste (“descent”) falls within the racial-discrimination convention.
The case against
India’s official position is that caste is not race and that internationalizing it violated sovereignty; more broadly, post-1950 India constitutionally bans untouchability and runs affirmative-action programs — the opposite of a domination statute.
In their words
India has made it clear that scheduled castes and scheduled tribes do not come under the purview of Article 1 of CERD… whereas caste is not based on race.
The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Only South Africa is beyond dispute; every other legal characterization is attributed to the body that made it. The lenses diverge most on the treaties’ phrase “racial group” and on the difference between a legal finding and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.